The DWmegawad Club plays: Hellbound

[sazza]

Fell quite a way behind, woops. Played maps 10 - 12 and will hopefully try to catch up more tomorrow. Anyway, some quick thoughts on the maps:

Map 10 - Cistern
What seems to be the obligatory sewer or sewer-like map of the set, we travel through this mostly bright building, slightly overgrown with vines, or perhaps mold. Not much else to write about really, just a standard Hellbound level.

Map 11 - Venom Canyon
Wow. What a map this was. Already bonus points for my favourite TNT midi, really enhances the atmosphere on display here. After leaving the cistern, we make our way through one end of the waste disposal facility, and over the dam pumping the toxic waste into a massive Half-Life inspired canyon. What a great design here, truly beautiful. Bonus points for the monorail system on display here, leading into the main UAC base. The level ends with a nice fight against two Cyberdemons, not a particularly difficult fight but a great thematic closer to the episode.

Map 12 - Power Station
From the massive exterior of the canyon we enter the UAC base, where we need to turn on the power to gain access to the monorail system to head deeper into the base. A decent level, the massive macro structure of the power station was great to look at but not so much to play in. On a side note, the main hallways seemed a bit too much copy and paste, there seemed to be a lot of them. But other rooms, especially seeing the hellish infestation for the first time, still look great. Combat is ramping up, what with Arch-Viles starting to be used, but nothing too difficult as of yet.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP16 City Bounds

Whoo, boy we are in for a bigger treat than MAP12 or MAP15. This is definitely a city map, although it seems most of the action takes place in the boroughs. Quite a fest. The first area will take at least 5 minutes to figure out too, and there's plenty of optional stuff too. All three secrets are in this area too, and I find a fast route to hit all of them. That being said, the only thing I need there is the yellow key, which is basically in the building in the center of this area. Meanwhile, there's quite a few scum monsters hanging in the boroughs, along with a ton of barrels that are lined up sporadically down there.

I find killing the horde of pain elementals and cacos that appear after the yellow key rather annoying, given the layout of this area. I try my best to make sure I don't miss anything, then I move on to the next place, kill a few enemies there, and return to see they followed me as I'd expect. Now to the streets. There's no major buildings along the road, but the streets themselves are impressively constructed. A bit empty the further you go, while the canyons on both sides do have some meat to kill. The red key is in the leftmost canyon, hiding behind some rocks, and it triggers quite a horde in the tunnel up ahead. Infighting was key to getting me through that, and then another canyon just has one final cleanup before the exit. Impressively large and can be quite fun. And somehow, this took less time to beat than MAP12. I must've memorized my way through this level more than that.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP16: City Bounds

The alternation of open and constrained maps continues as the player is thrust back into the city, starting out in a network of storm drains before scrambling through some ruined buildings and onto a series of elevated highways. The sense, then, is of progressively larger spaces opening up at each step, with the opposition growing more numerous and potent as you advance. Cacodemon swarms emerge at various points to harry the player; you know you've made progress when the air is suddenly filled with tomatoes dropping ball lightning on your head, though particularly in the early parts of the level there's a tendency for them to get caught up on the more complicated architecture or to find their way into interior spaces that really weren't designed to accommodate their bulk. It's clearly a level of two halves, with the transition coming as you take the teleporter that's buried beyong the yellow door and make your way onto the highways proper. I'd have liked to see design choices that didn't lead to the infantry portion of the demonic army clustering up at the broken end of the road overlooking the red door; for all that the WAD has made ample use of monster blocking lines thus far, they seem oddly sparse here, allowing the monstrous hordes ample opportunity to get themselves stuck in inconvenient places.

[A2Rob]

Map16 - City Bounds
Difficulty - UV
Time - 31:01

City Bounds marks our last visit to the city-scape maps in this wad, as we're quite literally leaving the towering buildings behind as we travel further into the cities outskirts. The first half of this level is comprised of some kind of drainage canal, with multiple buildings at every turn, and a larger skyscraper taking up the middle portion. Once out of the canal, we get to see more outside the city, specifically a giant highway. There's a lot of great scenery in this mission. I think my favorite of the bunch was the large freeway above the one we must traverse leading into the city's walls. The little park walk to the side of the freeway was pretty nice as well.

There's a large amount of hit scanners at the start of this map, though they're easy to deal with as long as you saved enough chaingun ammo. This level likes to through a lot of cacodemons towards you at once, and they always find a way to fly over the buildings from different angles, so it's a good idea to keep an eye on the sky throughout this map. The end swarm is pretty manageable considering the amount of space you have on the freeway. Same goes for the final cyber demon at the end.

[Demtor]

MAP16 - “City Bounds”
gzDoom - UV – Continuous








Author's Notes: Another new map, this time it is slightly Rage inspired. Beware the lots of cacodemons, they will literally fill
the skies. Also contains quite a few big baddies. Originally I was planning to put the Starport here, but the streets,
canals and highway zones turned out so large that I decided to make it a completely new map.

I can't imagine how much time this map must have taken to make. Also, that's crazy he thought he could fit another base on to the end! What a piece of stunning work this is. From start to end, top to bottom. What a fantastic massive city area with detail and an extreme amount of monsters most notably the Cacodemon swarm. Almost... too many?

I really got sick of pumping numerous SSG blasts into their thick red hides and carefully aiming rockets in the sky. After a while I just didn't think there was an end! I suppose that's the point of the flying horde. To surround, possibly entrap, dispirit and beat down the player with a challenging number of them flying through the air not normally seen. The free form design of the first half of the map was a great way to fight against them. The freedom to pick your battleground and make your stand against them is nice. That is, assuming you cleared out the canals and side buildings enough to retreat to where you would rather be. Me... I got stuck in here for a while before jumping out the front window.

That swarm and the battle on the highways were the two really big challenges for me on this map. It's a war of attrition and you have to be in it for the long haul because there are A LOT of enemies spread out everywhere.

The most surprising thing for me was when I decided to sprint past the spiders on the highway to see if I could end this map quickly but I was forced to retreat from the mastermind back the way I came except this time there was another wave of baddies climbing up from the blasted out section of the highway which fell below to a collection of green toxic waste. It was almost as if they waited for me to run in and then attempted to flank me! Incidental combat for sure, but it really felt like an organic strategy on their part. Very cool.

Lost souls, fireballs of all sorts, mastermind bullets and plasma blasts flying everywhere! In the end I took cover in the far overpass, collecting med kits and taking a lift down to opened up to yet another large battle bellow. It never ends! I ran around like crazy until I just resigned to killing EVERYTHING. Took a teleport back to the starting city, gathered up ammo and armor before returning to wade in to the horde on the highways and threw down. Wow! A real tooth and nail affair the likes of which I don't think we've seen in this wad. Great stuff.

[gaspe]

MAP16: A huge city level with some really cool sceneries, in particular the highways. I guess that the scale contributes to give the impression of being a big level but the space actually used feels very small in the end. There are lots of enemies and we can say that the map is split in two halves where in each one we will fight most of the enemies of the map. At the start there are at least a couple of handy easy secrets. If you are very unlucky as I was you'll pick the yellow key before finding the rocket launcher. When you pick the key a big swarm of cacodemons and pain elementals will appear, I guess that with the rocket launcher it's rather easy but otherwise you'll have to run around in search of shells and health which is scarce, the battle was really long. Considering how the weapons/ammo balance and progression was so far I think I should be thankful that you can find the rocket launcher so early in the map. The second part was really fast compared to clearing all the enemies in the lower sewer canals. The big horde on the highway wiped itself out before I could realize it.

[rehelekretep]

map31
fda here - i wouldnt recommend watching this: i die quite a bit and get lost quite a lot
im with DotW on this one - massively undercooked, poor lighting (or lack of it in any way) and what really hurt it for me was completely unnecessarily difficult progression; so pressing the BK switch accesses another switch that's hidden? ok. a flesh wall opens after i hit a random switch, which i then have to discover by venturing through 4 identical hallways around a circular spoke? fine. etc. etc.

despite this i managed to die frequently by playing terribly. oh well.

[baja blast rd.]

You should have recorded one big continuous FDA, with saves, :D.

[Spectre01]

MAP17 - Starport - Difficulty: Medium

"Looks like this city has a starport nearby. UAC usually has important installations near such places, to make cargo hauling easy. You need to gain entrance to that place, and you already see the way in, but it's unlikely this will be that easy..."

As seen in map16, if a Hellbound map has 600+ enemies at the start it's probably going to be long and absolutely YUGE. This is the case here and I can't even imagine how Z86 wanted to combine these two maps into one. What we get here is a massive Starport that strikes a good balance between indoor and outdoor adventuring. There are plenty of windows and open ceilings to always have that sense of being in a wide and open space compared to some of the more claustrophobic techbase levels we've seen. This also allows Z86 to show the player sections of the map that they can visit later as well as snipe some dudes in nearby buildings. Speaking of dudes, the majority of the techbase combat is against former military zombies so take cover lest thine arse be perforated!

Despite the sprawling nature of the indoor areas, progression is quite intuitive if you don't goof hard like me and miss the blue key behind the metal detectors and then spend 10-20 minutes running laps around the whole base... Jumping out onto the runway triggers demonic hordes to spawn in for a finale type of encounter. Veteran Hellbounders can use the same tactic as last map to run past the demons and have them slaughter each other in the ensuing chaos. The biggest danger here is the large amount of Arachnotron crossfire and getting stuck in the division between runways. Pain Elementals are used to encourage some fighting, which is good.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 16 -- City Bounds - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Ah, just in time. Things were dragging somewhat during the 15 + secret level triple-header, but I quite enjoyed this one, from start to finish. The telling thing here, I think, is that just like the rest of the mid-E2 cluster of maps, this is a big level with quite a lot of monsters in it (590, give or take, on skill 4) that can take a pretty hefty chunk of time in order to clear out, but I wasn't really conscious of the time I'd spent (45 minutes or so, with the last few of those being a search for the final secret) until I looked at the clock after finishing--good sign.

The setting here is initially an overrun slum, blocks of apartments and flats squatting on huge concrete piles separated by broad, sweeping gutters which have the semblance of converted canals, reminiscent of those from way back in map 02. Tall as these buildings are, they are in turn dwarfed by a number of anonymous office towers and a massive highway overpass looming over everything. As the route moves farther and farther beyond the city outskirts, the terrain becomes dominated by the multilevel highway structure, inlaid in majestic canyons and furrows, which fittingly enough serves as the road towards the exit point. Apart from the heavy structural damage and general disarray one might naturally expect to accompany the demonic invasion--indeed, the level ends where it does precisely because Hellguy comes upon a section of the highway which has been totally destroyed to the point it's no longer traversable--horrific sights abound to suggest that their reality is continuing to rapidly overtake our own; humongous gobbets of the creeping flesh seen in the UAC facility and in the city underground are here draped over some of the buildings and particularly over the overpass in great stinking curtains as though they were dropped from the sky (!?!), and some of the residency blocks have one or more faces almost entirely blasted out to show that they are packed literally wall to wall with masses of minced and compacted cadavers, like twisted titan Jell-O molds. Physical scale and scope are again the most striking aspects of the presentation here, certainly, and while much of the scenery is untraversable stagedressing on top of what is again a fairly simple layout, height change and the illusion of true 3D both heavily flavor the proceedings. Lighting is again a fairly simple evening-dim floodfill with shadows and illumination where it would make sense (beneath the underpass, near burning parts of buildings, etc.), more than adequate in this case. The music selection is the "Death Row" track from Duke3D, which here fits like a glove.

To be blunt, monster placement here is generally not very artful, but then, here it doesnt' really need to be. Scads of monsters of all shapes and sizes teem over the initial slum and underpass area, ranging from zombie patrols to hearty dollops of demons to a roving cyberdemon who starts at the south end (I think you have to approach close enough to his area to get him to appear, though he'll be there before you can see him), and everything in between. In contrast to other Hellbound maps, there's no real effort here to be stingy with weaponry, though given the size and basic nonlinearity of the playing field it will take either a bit of luck or foreknowledge in order to reach the RL early enough to put it to maximal use; the plasma rifle is in a 'secret' that isn't one early on (feel ashamed if you miss it), and the BFG is found in a more credible secret in the YK highrise--I missed this until recombing the level at the end, but I don't feel like not having it hampered the enjoyability of the combat in any way. All of these looser placements, in concert with the spacious and open playing area and a mixed monster complement large enough to credibly fill it out, make for a grand old spate of 'free play', which is really what Z86's style is more suited to. You can methodically crawl through this level if you like (though from pistol-start you may encounter some early ammo austerity if you refuse to press forward), but you can also blitz deep into it sowing chaos and reacting on the fly, and in a really refreshing turn of events, monster-blocking lines here have very little presence other than the one separating the first 2/3rds of the level from the Y-fork in the highway at the last section.

Again, per the Hellbound norm it's generally not what most experienced players would find to be particularly dangerous (though there is a real danger of being shot to shit by hitscanner squads in the opening minutes if you don't exercise at least some mindfulness of where you're running), but what's on offer is stout enough that you can cook up quite a lot of trouble for yourself if you've the inclination, and then enjoy using the level's basic aspect of non-linearity (multiple ways of getting to the same place, more than one exit out of most buildings provided by structural damage, etc.) and its split-level layout to stay on top of things. I believe the actual vertical distance between playable planes is not as pronounced here as it was in "Doom District", though high/low dynamics are a much more pronounced element of moment-to-moment action throughout the runtime here. I sometimes felt that it was a little more inconvenient to reach higher levels than I might've liked (i.e. there are only a handful of staircases for climbing up to the mid-level walkways lining the gutters), but by the same token I reckon being able to change levels too easily would've taken some of the improvisational edge off of the combat. While it's not a hard level, it is for the most part very satisfying in pace (which, as aforesaid, is because you're more able to dictate your own pace in this case), though the fighting that takes place on the ground under the highway passes in the last part of the level is perhaps a little more of a downshift than one might like, with the same large scale combining with much simpler terrain to make for action that seems simpler than what preceded it, even as the monster composition remains in a higher gear.

The potential lull at the end is compensated somewhat by the massive horde trundling out of the northwestern mountain underpass (presumably tied to picking up the red key down below); from a tactical standpoint this is an extremely simplistic encounter that will mostly infight itself to death if you prod at it a little, though in this case I think appeals to spectacle/cinematic emphasis again apply, especially considering that the fight will synergize to some degree with pre-existing monsters if you've not painstakingly cleaned them all out by that point. The other highlight fight, and one I feel is probably the most effective of Hellbound's more designed encounters to this point, is the huge cacoswarm which boils over the highrise as you approach the yellow key inside. This fight is nuanced in a way that most previous similar encounters have not been (either by design or by being hamstrung by block-lines or such); if you burst out of the building the swarm will chase you in a freeform way for much of the next major stage of progression, and if you hole up inside it can surprise you by seeping in en mass through several of the building's many entrances/exits (which it is large enough to credibly do), possibly leaving you cornered (or nearly so) and requiring more improvisation. Good stuff.

So, in sum, quite liked it, would say it's my favorite map in the set to this point.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP17: Starport

Big, sprawling, and concludes with a Doomguy-versus-the-World battle, but in a very different way to MAP16 and MAP14. Instead of small nuggets of claustrophobic interior embedded in an open world (in the fashion of MAP16's opening area and the grid of buildings in Doom II MAP13) fully half of this map is a single structure of different interconnected areas; I think this is the first time in the WAD I've so strongly had a sense of... "macrostructural design," especially as a playing space in which the player is involved rather than a scenic vista to dash past (as in MAP11's canyon trail or, once again, MAP16's second half with its multi-level highway structures). The interconnectedness, in combination with the wide-open northern half of the map and plenty of windows to the outdoors, gives rise to situations where the soldiers, imps, and other assorted nasties that infest the base can shuffle around to come at you from unexpected angles, especially if you retreat in the face of opposition to grab more health and ammo and give the opposition some time to wander; the gameplay is thus pleasantly dynamic and unpredictable.

The final battle itself seems mostly to come down to running laps around a mixed cluster of bad guys and letting the arachnotrons, mancubi, and other area-denial specialists make lots of new friends; Hurt Me Plenty throws a single cyberdemon into the mix, and there's a spider mastermind that may or may not survive to that point depending on player action (I took it out when it first woke up earlier in the map, wary of hitscan health attrition even at long distances). The pressure doesn't let up, and the loading bays extending south into the starport macrostructure from the main runway give opportunities for the monster pathfinding code to lead uninvolved combatants into cul-de-sacs where they can lurk in wait for a player that comes out to survey the damage after the fight has died down.

Overall this is a map that, I felt, really shouldn't work as well as it does; between certain representational gimmicks and the overall commitment to building a single coherent structure rather than focusing on individual map sections as playing spaces, I kept expecting the level's success in meeting its goals to work to the detriment of its actual playability. But it's a lot of fun to blast your way through, and the interconnected starport facilities provide a really strong sense of venturing into hostile territory and putting yourself in genuine danger.

[rehelekretep]

rdwpa said:

You should have recorded one big continuous FDA, with saves, :D.

oh dont worry, i used saves, but i still overestimated my ability :D

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP17 Starport

Another really big map, this one focuses mostly on, yes, a spaceport. A very detailed one at that. Interesting that we start off in the teleport hub by the way. But no need to reach a teleporter now, instead let's see the base for what it's worth. Nice detail even for the STARTAN2 textures, and combat is, quite mild. Aim for the blue key first, past the metal detector thingie, then use it on the blue door close to some of the hangars to find the switch for lowering the red key. Quite a few enemies like to hide in some nooks though, so I scavenge when necessary.

Figuring out where the red doors took awhile though, but when I did, I basically scavenge the eastern rooms here, without much regress. Those corridors are cool too, but I had to watch my right side for some sneaky ones. I then make it back outside, getting a megasphere while dealing with enemies out in this very vast open field. Yep, the hangars are wide open, and plenty of enemies show up around here too. I make a beeline for where the yellow key is (that one tower), while lots of monsters infight, which included that cyber. Satisfying, though the lag that came with this open area meant a bit of trouble for dodging. Still, pretty good overall.

[A2Rob]

Map17 - Starport
Difficulty - UV
Time - 25:12

This author's rendition of a Doom starport is quite fantastic. It even has a conveyor system for luggage. And really loud metal detectors. The inside of the base is full or narrow corridors and tight spaces making for some pretty close encounters. I especially like the area around the red key, with landing spots for different aircraft. Too bad we don't get any aircraft of any sorts in this level. The outside is just as impressive, with a larger runway and several fueling ports.

A lot of this level is just firing down the various corridors scattered throughout the base, all cultivating in a huge confrontation outside on the runway. There's a large number of hit scanners on the map, as well as a mastermind outside on the runway. The runway battle is largely avoidable if you just retreat behind cover, allowing the enemies to in fight with each other. I'd normally fight the horde, but since my laptop can't handle huge amounts of monsters onscreen at once, I just sat in the back and waited for the chaos to end.

[A2Rob]

BTW, how compatible is this mod with PrBoom+?. I'm getting a lot of frame rate issues now that the wads ramping up its monster encounters. Pretty sure Map20 and onward won't be very playable on my laptop.

[DAZZER]

MAP14: Doom District
Difficulty - UV
Time - 24:51

Welcome to Hitscann Hell ! This is a very huge level with a beautiful city design. But the Gameplay in this one is pretty boring... Chaingunners everywhere... even though the Map started cool with the 2 Masterminds cause you easily can get them to infight with the arachnotrons. The Buildungs are amazing... no question... But as I said i didnt realy like the monster and Item Placement in this one :( At one time i ran out of munition. That shouldnt happen in such a big Map... But still way better then Map 12 :D

[rehelekretep]

map32 - fda here

nice castle! highlight was the massive reveal of archviles in the 'hell' section - made me shit myself and fly off the plateau! still found some progression confusing and areas were oversized/underpopulated (however you want to spin it).

map16 - fda here

load of crap. overly long, full of boring sniper enemies that are a chore to clear up, and the highway sections were easily skipped as who wants to supervise an infight party with no risk & no BFG? (unless its in a *FUN!* secret that i missed). also even if you wanted to piss about waiting for everything to kill itself youve got PEs spawning lost souls to whack you in the head and be generally a nuisance. finally, the multi-levels mean you get blocked in by infinite height if you take a wrong turn or try to experiment.

map17 - fda here

much more fun! the runway section was much more enjoyable than the aforementioned highways from map16, and the port section was more interesting/hectic than the sewer/tower blocks. strange PE congregation at one end - i guess if you miss them they can really cause a nuisance.

[rehelekretep]

A2Rob said:

BTW, how compatible is this mod with PrBoom+?. I'm getting a lot of frame rate issues now that the wads ramping up its monster encounters. Pretty sure Map20 and onward won't be very playable on my laptop.

i had quite bad judders at the end of map17 with the long runway and multiple arachnotrons spamming everywhere

[Amarande]

A2Rob said:

BTW, how compatible is this mod with PrBoom+?. I'm getting a lot of frame rate issues now that the wads ramping up its monster encounters. Pretty sure Map20 and onward won't be very playable on my laptop.

PrBoom+ was one of the tested ports in the textfile, and I have not seen any mechanical issues on it. On a sufficiently beefy PC the only WAD I've really run into any kind of trouble with slowdowns on is Nuts (which I've seen even bring an E3-1240v3 with a GTX 770 to its knees on at least one port, I forget if it was ZDoom or PrBoom+ that was the sluggish one).

The problem has got more to do with your laptop - the WAD is just *that* demanding on later levels; this is also the reason why two versions of MAP29 are included and the original is actually in a separate PWAD.

[A2Rob]

Amarande said:

The problem has got more to do with your laptop - the WAD is just *that* demanding on later levels; this is also the reason why two versions of MAP29 are included and the original is actually in a separate PWAD.

Guess I might have to boot up my dying PC for the last chapter then. My laptop definitely can't handle Map29 in any capacity.

[sazza]

Map 13 - Encrus Station
The monorail ride we exited the last level on was short lived, as we've crashed into the hellish corruption. This area of the base seems to be the most corrupted we've seen, half the place seems to be either being corrupted, with the pink flesh oozing its way through everything, or straight up corrupted, like the marble hell section at the end of the level. Combat picks up here, especially with what feels like a low amount of health pick ups, but that might just be me playing poorly. We finally get the BFG here as well, in a nice set piece area. Of course, grabbing the BFG unleashes the demonic hordes, but there easily dispatched. I managed to get hit pretty hard by the end cyberdemon, so starting out the next level might get a bit tricky.

Map 14 - Doom District
Another great looking map! we emerge from the other end of the teleporter into a massive city area, one of the best city areas made for doom really. Clearing out the city streets and the minor spider infestation wasn't too tricky, especially with the BFG from the last level, but the second horde proved to be a challenge. I must have been playing bad, but I spent most of the fight running around on 10 health, until I finally found some in the park. On that note, this level houses the most monsters in the map set so far, made even worse by the hard to kill PE's in the second horde.

Map 15 - The Vault
Leaving the city behind we venture deeper into the UAC base, where we find all sorts of experiments the UAC were doing, as well as their 'trophies' from the teleportation experiments. What this boils down to is a massive exploration level through the dense underground base, filled with lots of critters to snuff out. Not particularly challenging, but a high enough monster count to keep you on your toes. I managed to find the secret exit, but I don't think I'll worry about them in this play through, although I might keep a save and play through them later if I get time. I will say though, I love how each secret level's normal exit send you back to the vault, and how each time the area is more corrupted. It really helps to give a sense of continuity.

[Spectre01]

A2Rob said:

BTW, how compatible is this mod with PrBoom+?. I'm getting a lot of frame rate issues now that the wads ramping up its monster encounters. Pretty sure Map20 and onward won't be very playable on my laptop.

Should be fine. PRBoom+ handles slaughtermaps and stuff like nuts.wad better than ZDoom-based ports. Sometimes GLBoom+ performs better though and I have noticed some slowdown in PRBoom+ when testing some of my maps that didn't exist in OpenGL ports. Either way, the outdoor section in map17 is one of the most demanding in Hellbound, performance wise, along with map29 of course. It may not be monster related and just due to the massive number of visible sectors and sheer size once you hit the runway.

MAP18 - Computer Complex - Difficulty: Easy

"This place looks familiar. You are not sure where you have seen places like this before, but you are content to push on. You are finally on track towards the source, or maybe the demons are playing with your head."

An "easy" map this far in?! Well, what we have here is an E1 tribute map in the form of a large, nukage-filled techbase with plenty of references to Doom's iconic first episode. Nostalgia and playing the shareware as kid etc. aside, I find E1 to be the least interesting of the original 3 episodes and avoid E1-inspired PWADs like the plague. I'd rather play a megawad made entirely out of Dead Simple clones than another E1 tribute episode.

Having said that, this is a fun and easy map on continuous as you mow down hordes of lower-tier enemies. Now, I haven't had any issues with monster-blocking lines affecting my play before but they're very hard to ignore here. It's not a huge deal when dealing with ranged monsters, sometimes even making encounters more difficult when you can't lure them out, but there are multiple cases here where a pack of Pinkies ends up being a literal meat-wall that you're forced to put out of its misery as it hopelessly tries to charge through an invisible wall. I don't really get the design decision behind this.

Now another amusing bit is that I actually felt like Pistol Starting this map. WARNING: Do not try this at home! I grabbed the secret SSG after maxing the map and ended up spending 45+ minutes holding fire on the regular Shotgun and tapping the Chaingun. I'm still thoroughly convinced that Pistol Start play was not in any way a priority for Z86 as the forced-start maps (07, 20, 21) play smoothly while the mileage greatly varies in the others. Thou shalt not Pistol Start Hellbound and then whine about it!

As for the actual design here, Z86 does a good job at referencing some popular E1 landmarks with his own spin and high level of detail. Next up is an E2 tribute! And just like E2 itself, it's a lot more interesting.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP18: Computer Complex

What we've got here is, as its name teases at, a Knee Deep in the Dead tribute - E1M7, primarily, but with sections of E1M2 and E1M5 all but lifted an plunked down into its structure, along with hidden rooms to spell out the references if they weren't obvious enough. Fittingly, opposition is mostly low-tier, with chaingun troopers rounding out the zombie squad, Hell Knights occasionally subbing in for their bigger, meaner, pinker brothers, and the occasional revenant putting in an appearance, but flying monsters and the area-denial specialists of Doom II's bestiary staying out of the way of this shareware throwback party. The gameplay, then, largely consists of clearing broad corridors of teeming throngs of imps, undead, and demons, and the monster count (300 or so on Hurt Me Plenty) is inflated by the presence of so many squishies. Which isn't to say that the hitscanners aren't quite capable of stripping armour and health off a careless marine in short order.

I think the return to enclosed interior spaces provides a necessary change of pace after the architectural grandeur of MAP16's city crawl and MAP17's macrostructure-plus-battlefield combo; this is a smaller and more intimate map where the encounters occur at close range and a strong feeling of segmentation means that you don't have to worry about distant hitscan traces chipping away at your health or packs of free-roaming murder machines flooding parts of the level while your back is turned - at least, not until its closing moments when some reinforcements put in an appearance between the red key and its matching door. It's an opportunity to cool down and catch one's breath, and the abundant E1M* references add a sense of playfulness to a WAD that can sometimes lose itself in its own sombre atmosphere and grand ambitions.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP18 Computer Complex

A conglomeration of episode 1 highlights. The combat will be generally easy throughout, but of course the map is complex. Some of the secrets will tell you "hey, this is the E1 section I'm homaging!" and what not. First goal is to get the yellow key in the E1M5 section, not that hard, but that stupid hitscanner ambush can fuck off. Then I figure out the blue key using a switch in a nukage-surrounded structure (what is this part supposed to represent? E1M3?), then it's off to the E1M2 section. Quite a lot of hitscanners were roaming around, and some of them made my blood boil. But this can be done much quicker than the levels before it so it isn't that bad if I wasn't so ill-tempered.

[Demtor]

MAP17 - “Star Port”
gzDoom - UV – Continuous

Hellbound; never a dull base design and never an uninteresting hallway. Lots of hitscanners so I appreciated the bevy of green armors spread throughout. Couple of lonely AV's for some cool moments. Lots of neat heli pads, conveyor belts, metal detectors, various tech bits and display screens all over the place. The large scaled battle on the strip was a lot of fun. Tons of room to run, and run.... and run... annnnnnd ruuuuun. Lol, I zig zagged until the Cyberdemon's had taken down just about everyone before giving them a blast from the BFG and they went down easy. I liked the visual of the YK in the control tower. The sunrise makes this level really look great.

MAP18 - “Computer Complex”
gzDoom - UV – Continuous

Didn't expect an Episode 1 homage mixed in with Hellbound. It's a good map (probably better than a lot of E1 styled rehashes) but I'm kind of over the episode 1 nostalgia gimmick. I just finished going through Favillesco's episode 1 recently on the tail end of BTSX's wad of the month playthrough and after doing that, I'm good.

[gaspe]

MAP17: It's nice to see some more interconnections between the various locations of the Starport, and the place has a cool sense of being a big unique structure. The gameplay is still focused on rooms and corridors, but here it works better as the place retains its realistic traits to represent the location while providing fun situations on the gameplay. The big final showdown was really cool even if most of the monsters will probably kill themselves by infight, but stuff like that is nice sometimes and taking at least some action it's more fun here. My favourite level so far, spot on on everything.

[Suitepee]

https://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/v/101868692 = part 6 (final) of my playthrough, covering maps 29 & 30. (UV, continuous)

And so Hellbound ends with an Icon of Sin. Sigh, grumble, etc. At least this one had some interesting visuals in it, but it was still an IoS map. Could have used some radsuits also.

Map 29 ran fine for me (using the altmap29.wad full version thing), and bar a few PE/Archvile spots wasn't "Very Hard" at all. It was quite lengthy, but again in a good way.

Overall I found Hellbound to be a very enjoyable megawad. I'd rate this as highly up there in my mind with the likes of Going Down/NOVA 1 &2/Winter's Fury for megawads I've enjoyed a lot.

I think rileymartin's description of the megawad definitely helped in this regard, since I knew what to expect. This should be done more often with DWMC picks from fans of the chosen wad(s) in my opinion.

The detailing from Z86 felt on par with stuff I've seen from Xaser/mouldy/dobu/Mechadon in terms of detailing that is just right, and I liked the incidental gameplay for the most part. A few more lockins or traps would have been nice, but I liked playing through Hellbound and it never felt boring at any real point.
Honestly, it was a nice change from having everything be booby-trapped!

I'd like to play stuff like this in the future. Perhaps I'll try out that Hellcore that someone suggested sometime....

[gaspe]

MAP18: After the huge Starport something a bit smaller is really appreciated, even though this map is also big. The style here calls directly KDITD with also a few homages as well. It's cool that after clearing some hallways with the shotgun you can find a secret super-shotgun to clear more hallways with it. But even without it the map would be fine, you'll encounter the classic E1 opposition with a few additions from Doom 2, the map only needs more rockets. There are also other odd block monster lines. The level looks cool but that overuse of trims supports are really unnecessary.

[A2Rob]

Map18 - Computer Complex
Difficulty - UV
Time - 15:46

The mother of all tech base levels. Computer Complex is a straight up tribute to Doom's Knee Deep in the Dead. I actually don't have a lot to say on this level, other than it's tech layout is quite smooth and well polished. The area outside the yellow key doors contains a large central hub area surrounded by waste, which for the most part can be ignored without any need to traverse it. I found the exit area to be the most interesting, with it's fusion of hell and brick structures protruding from the floor. A good indicator of what's to come.

Basically hit scanners - the level. Despite this, its overall pretty easy, I spent a lot of this level firing my SSG into large crowds of zombie commandos, imps, and an overwhelmingly large number of demons. Funny I never noticed the monster blocking linedefs until people brought it up in this thread. An odd design choice, since it ends up stopping a large number of the levels demons from coming into attacking range.

[A2Rob]

I'll be switching to GLBoom+ after the next level. It held a playable frame rate on Map29, which should be good enough for the remainder of the wad.